07 Sep Online Payment: More Than 70% of Kenyan Consumers Have Internet Access and More Than 50% Can Pay With M-Pesa for eCommerce Purchases

Posted at 12:03h

East Africa is ripe and ready for global eCommerce and mCommerce with its own internal combustion engine of consumers connected and hungry for local and international goods and services. In Kenya more than 70% of the consumers are connected to the internet, more than 50% of them have a way to pay with M-Pesa and even more of them if you count the other mobile money methods available.

And growing, with more than two and a half million new data subscriptions in the first quarter of this year. Internet startups, an increasing level of education and entrepreneurship, backed by government are attracting the attention of international celebrities like Barack Obama and leading entrepreneurs around the world who have visited and held workshops with a view to catalysing commerce between global economies and emerging markets.

Safaricom with its M-Pesa payment method is a leader in Africa (and in the world for that matter) in the provision of a simple, affordable and pervasive mobile payment methods that for example via African Payment Solutions can be enabled by international eCommerce and mCommerce merchants for payment online by Kenyan consumers.

To say that Kenya is the “hub for East Africa” is a given. Multinational eCommerce merchants can start with Kenya and M-Pesa and expand outwards from there with linked internet and mobile payment methods like Smartcash in Rwanda.

M-Pesa has even catalysed the growth of rent-to-own sustainable energy use whereby consumers get a clean energy solar unit installed and can regulate and pay for it online. Pay-as-you-go solar. We have a lot to learn from the Kenyans – if you can’t beat them, join them. Here is a fast developing consumer market which is connected, online and ready to trade.

The combination of mobile and payment is at its best, empowering millions of Kenyans, enabling them to pay and bringing them into the global economy. Via African Payment Solutions payment gateway, more than 20m Kenyans have access to the internet and can buy and pay online using M-Pesa.

Simple private sector solutions like M-Pesa and the side businesses take pressure off a supportive government to deliver services and grow the economy. For example, the combination of ability to pay and electricity reduces crime as a result of lighting and a cash free ecosystem.

Bringing the bulk of the population onto the “fingrid” facilitates a natural growth in trade and economic welfare. Kenyans can buy and pay online using M-Pesa and their mobile phone. Can you imagine how this growth will hockey stick as smartphone penetration increases.